


My Youth is Yours

by star_child



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Breaking and Entering, Gen, Parties, Slice of Life, alternate universe – exchange students, anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-06 01:45:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11026011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/star_child/pseuds/star_child
Summary: What do you get when you grab a bunch of Japanese college kids and have them undergo trials before shipping them across the ocean and in return giving Japan some of your own kids?An exchange student program.Buckle up.





	My Youth is Yours

**Author's Note:**

> basically everyone is in the same exchange student program to america so they know each other and trash talk the silly american kids in japanese  
> i’ve been saving these prompts as they happened to me and made me feel yk Young, but i never wrote anything on them cuz i was like oh it’s probably different being a teenager in japan but Then i was like.. yk.. i’ve been wanting to write an exchange student au… so here’s Everyone, having american experiences w the added fun of me getting to write in a bunch of my friends

**trying a girl’s perfume at a party friday night, still smelling it on your wrist saturday morning**

Hinata never gave much thought to what he would do for college. He thought he’d go somewhere nearby, play volleyball for their team, maybe get a degree in something sports related. Maybe he’d be a gym teacher or something.

He never thought he’d get scouted by an American school, given a sports scholarship as part of their exchange program, and _accepted_ it all. He never thought he’d end up on a couch from the seventies, purple and soft, with another Japanese exchange student on one side and a pretty American girl on his other side.

The girl is _insanely_ pretty, all sea swept blonde hair, sun kissed, sand tinted skin. She’s wearing a high necked white tank top with tiny roses all over it, with tight green jeans. He can’t see her shoes, but he’s sure they match the round, blue tinted sunglasses that sit in her hair.

She’s scrolling through Instagram, smiling at pictures of her friends, liking them, commenting on them with lots of exclamation points and heart eye emojis. Hinata watches, half listening to the other exchange student’s – Kageyama, if he remembers from their separate, smaller orientation – words, partially drowned out anyway because of the loud music.

Suddenly, the blonde girl looks up, looks right at him and smiles wide.

Hinata is surprised, but he smiles back.

“Do you know whose party this is?” the girl shouts, pushing the sunglasses up higher in her hair. He doesn’t know why she has them, it’s been dark for hours.

He takes a moment to think about what she’s asked. His English is good – it has to be, he had to pass a million tests to be accepted for the exchange program – but it leaves a lot to be desired.

“No!” he finally shouts back. Kageyama found this party, and he’s the only other exchange student on his dorm floor, so he invited him.

The pretty girl shrugs, apparently unbothered. She smells like salt and something sweet, and before Hinata can stop himself he takes a deep breath in through his nose.

He doesn’t think. “You smell nice!”

_Stupid._

But the girl just laughs, still all easy smiles and warm green eyes. “I just bought a new perfume! I wasn’t sure about it though. You like it?”

“I love it!”

“You want to try some?”

Hinata blinks. Americans are so odd. He nods.

The girl digs around in her purse – it matches her sunglasses – finally unearthing a small spray bottle. The sloshing liquid inside is blue, and the bottle is indeed designed to look like a small beach scene.

“Give me your wrist!” she shouts.

Hinata wordlessly holds out his wrist, pushing up the sleeve of his sweater. She uncaps the bottle and spritzes his wrist. It’s cold, and feels like millions of tiny gentle pricks, and some of it goes more out than directly down and he coughs as he gets a faceful of it.

“Haha, I’m sorry!” the girl laughs.

“It’s okay!” Hinata laughs back.

He lifts his wrist to his nose, inhales the ocean.

 

For the rest of the night, he periodically lifts his wrist to his nose to smell it. It’s wonderful, and the more he smells it the more he likes it. Just like the more he listens to trashy American pop, the more he enjoys that too.

He forces Kageyama to smell it as well, and even though he calls him a dumbass he catches him looking at his wrist for the rest of the night like he wants to smell it again.

Everyone he runs into – whether they be American kids who stop to welcome him or other exchange students who need a break from the foreign language, or want to take a moment to discuss the culture differences – he begins every conversation by unceremoniously shoving his wrist in people’s faces, going, “Smell! Smell the ocean!” Everyone likes it.

The rest of the party is, for the most part, uneventful. It’s plenty of fun, but nothing too wild or crazy happens. He watches a game of beer pong, is offered a turn but does not accept. He watches a dance off, has to admit that for two drunk white college boys they dance pretty well. One of the other exchange students challenges the winner – a tall boy with crazy black hair, friends with Kenma, a friend he made at orientation. Kenma’s friend wins the second round.

He walks back to the dorms with Kageyama as they swap highlights, and he once again forces the taller boy to smell his wrist. He obliges without complaint this time.

Kageyama’s door is closer to the stairs, so they stand outside his room awkwardly for a moment, before Hinata reaches up and throws his arms around his neck, squeezes for a moment, the rushes down the hallway with a shouted, “Goodnight!” in English over his shoulder.

His roommate is still awake when he enters the room, sitting at his desk with one hand supporting his head, the other tirelessly putting together a Google Slides presentation from his planning doc. It’s near two in the morning.

“When is that due?” Hinata asks as he throws his sweater on his bed.

“Yesterday,” his roommate answers. He’s a tall boy, with light brown hair and moles that spot over his face and neck and disappear beneath the collar of his shirt. Hinata has seen him come out of the shower, knows they extend all the way down his chest and back.

Hinata winces sympathetically. “That sucks.”

His roommate – his name is Chris – sighs, rubbing his face with the hand not already planted there. “How was the party?” he asks through a small yawn. “Make any friends?”

“I think so!” Hinata smiles, excitedly shoving his wrist in his roommate’s face. “Girl lets me try her perfume! Smells good, yes?”

Chris gives a small sniff, then nods. “That is good. Who was the girl?”

“I don’t know her name,” he pouts. “But she was beautiful! Her hair was… ah…” he tries to think of the specific word they use in English, but it’s late and he’s tired and he can’t think of it. “Yellow,” he finally says. “Yellow hair.”

“Blonde,” Chris supplies.

“Yes! Blonde hair! Very light and pretty, she was like the ocean in a person.”

Chris smiles at him. “That sounds great, man.” He cracks his knuckles. “Listen, the professor said I can turn this in by noon tomorrow and he’ll only take five points off, but I got plans for tomorrow morning so I have to finish it now. Do you want me to turn off the light?”

“You keep working, I don’t care,” Hinata yawns. He collapses on his bed, tugs his sweater over his face, and falls asleep in minutes.

In the morning, when he wakes with his hand near his face, he can still faintly smell the salt of the ocean.

 

* * *

 

**sitting quietly as a friend cuts/plays with your hair**

Kenma’s hand snaps out behind him reflexively when he feels something tug at his hair, connects with a solid _smack_ on the assailant.

“Owwww, Kenmaaa,” Oikawa whines in English, all petulant and annoying, and he can see him rubbing his arm from the corner of his eye. “Why do you have to bully me?”

“You deserve it,” Iwaizumi mutters in Japanese from his chair in the corner, not looking up from where he’s highlighting sections of his textbook.

“Can’t touch Kenma,” Kuroo nods seriously, also speaking Japanese and not looking up from the novel folded over in his hands.

“That’s no faaaiiir,” Oikawa continues, switching to whine in Japanese like the rest of them, flopping his body toward Kuroo. As Oikawa’s head comes near his leg, Kuroo lifts it to rest over the arm of his chair with the other one. If Oikawa notices, he doesn’t comment on it. “You touch him all the time!” he continues.

“That’s because I grew up with him,” Kuroo drawls, uninterested, “I’ve known him two decades, you’ve known him two months.” That’s not completely true, as Kenma isn’t even nineteen yet, but he lets it slide.

“But don’t you agree with me?” Oikawa presses.

Kuroo finally looks up, rolls his eyes. “I wasn’t even listening to you Oikawa, I don’t know what the hell you said.”

“Why does everyone hate me?”

“Because you’re fucking obnoxious,” Iwaizumi growls. “We’re in a _library,_ Shittykawa, some of us are trying to study.”

Oikawa ignores him, switching back to English as he sings, “Kenma needs a haircut~”

“I do not need a haircut,” Kenma finally mutters back, not bothering with English. Of all the exchange students he probably doesn’t speak it the worst, but he definitely speaks it the least. He just can’t be bothered to keep bouncing back and forth, so he listens when people speak English to him, but rarely replies.

“You do,” Oikawa insists, straightening his back where he sits beside Kenma on the floor, “It’s nearly to your shoulders, I know you haven’t cut it since you got here.”

“He doesn’t want to talk to a barber,” Kuroo supplies, still engrossed in his book.

Oikawa rolls his eyes. “Of course.”

Iwaizumi yanks headphones out of his bag and very pointedly shoves them onto his ears, violently plugging them into his phone and hitting play on his music.

“I could cut it for you,” Oikawa offers, still ignoring his own best friend. “I used to cut my little sister’s hair, just a trim.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister,” Kuroo says.

“She died after Oikawa decapitated her with scissors,” Iwaizumi says, just a little too loud so he can hear himself over his music.

Kenma pays them no mind. “No,” he replies flatly. He’s not letting Oikawa – flighty, erratic Oikawa – near his head and neck with sharp scissors.

“Come oooon,” he wheedles as Kuroo laughs at Iwaizumi, “It’ll look fine, I swear I won’t even do anything to it, I’ll just cut it back to the length it was back home.”

“You only met me once back home. For like five minutes.”

Oikawa puffs out his chest, apparently proud of what he’s about to declare. “Your hair was _just_ even with the corner of your jaw!” he announces. “I remember because I was sitting right next to you at the meeting where we all met.”

“Stalker,” Kenma mumbles. Then, even quieter, “Fine.”

Oikawa does a little wiggle of happiness before diving across the room to retrieve the little trashcan in the corner. Luckily it’s empty of anything but some scraps of paper and dead pens, so it doesn’t stink as he positions it behind Kenma’s back.

“I promise I’ll be careful,” he says, and his voice is so quiet and controlled that for once, Kenma believes him. He digs a pair of scissors out of his bag – which causes Kuroo to lower his eyebrows in concern – and carefully begins.

“Do you want it to be an even line?” Oikawa asks after a few quiet snips.

“I don’t care,” Kenma remarks. He goes back to editing his English essay with a Chrome extension that checks his grammar, but another few minutes of Oikawa’s scissors brushing through hair lulls him into a state of sleepiness. He closes his eyes, fingers stilling over the trackpad. He focuses on the metal whispering past his skin, the steady _snip, snip, snip,_ the tickle of hair gathering beneath the neck of his sweater.

It feels like forever before he senses Oikawa sit back and whisper, “All done.”

He opens his eyes to find Oikawa holding out a small mirror. He wants to make a quip about how _of course_ Oikawa carries a mirror with him, but he can’t bring himself to do it when he catches sight of his reflection.

He let the boy he met at orientation – Shouyou – bleach his hair last month, because he said that’s what Americans did, so it frames his face, pale and wispy, with just a little bit of black poking out at the top. It’s as short as it was back home, almost perfectly so, and he has to admit that Oikawa did a good job keeping it even. All the split ends are gone, and it feels a bit lighter.

“Like it?” Oikawa asks.

He nods once.

“You look cute,” Kuroo offers, and Kenma is relieved he looks back at his book before he can see the blush the floods his cheeks. “Isn’t your sweater full of hair, though?”

“Yeah.”

Kuroo puts his book down and begins rummaging through his bag.

“I’m impressed,” Iwaizumi deadpans as Kuroo continues his search, “He’s still alive. And not gushing blood.”

“You’re all so _mean_ to me!” Oikawa cries again.

When Kuroo sits up again, he tosses a bundle of fabric at Kenma’s head. “You can borrow mine,” he says, picking his book back up like the gesture means nothing at all. Kenma fights away the intensifying blush as he slips his own sweater over his head, shuffling Kuroo’s down in its place. It smells like home, even if it’s old and the colors are murky, and he feels safe.

 

* * *

 

**curling up in blankets alone on a winter morning, listening to cars on the road and quiet music**

Akaashi is enjoying America, so far. He’s enjoying the city, he’s enjoying the people, his classes, the architecture, the food, practically everything. The only thing he’s not really enjoying is this whole ‘roommate’ business, as he’s always enjoyed his space. But he supposes it’s not so bad. His roommate is nice, if a little awkward, with too long curly black hair and a bit of an acne problem. Branden. His last name is something horrific, full of Z’s and W’s and C’s.

But he went out last night and sent Akaashi a text at one thirty in the morning (that woke him up, rude) saying he wouldn’t be home, so the dorm is silent and still when Akaashi wakes on Saturday.

He doesn’t open his eyes as soon as he wakes up, hoping he’ll be able to fall back asleep or at least doze for a little while longer. It’s rare that he wakes up alone, usually his roommate his here at the least, if he doesn’t have one or more of his friends here as well.

Quiet is a blessing, one he feels required to take advantage of.

Back at home, in Tokyo, his apartment was high enough from the street that he couldn’t really hear the traffic. Here, he is not afforded that luxury. Their dorm is on the second floor, and he somehow got stuck with the bed beside the window. The cars are loud, but not unbearably so.

He lies in the dark, because as many differences as he and his roommate have, they both don’t like the light in the morning and the shades are almost always drawn. (Unless his roommate has that one friend over – the short dark skinned girl with purple hair and a choker necklace – who admonishes them for wallowing in the dark and yanks the blinds open.)

After a while, the silence begins to gnaw on him. He gropes around the mattress for his phone, blearily unlocking it and squinting at the brightness. He fumbles to turn it down with his eyes mostly closed.

Opening his music, Akaashi selects the playlist he uses to fall asleep: quiet songs, mostly a lot of piano. Turning down the volume, he sets it beside his pillow and lets the gentle notes fill his room.

 

* * *

 

**falling asleep in a couch pile at a party**

Kenma has never been one for parties. Kuroo used to go, back in high school he was quite popular, and though he always invited Kenma along he never went. He knows what parties are _like,_ in theory, everyone does.

He wasn't expecting this.

The party is being hosted by the president of the school's Asian Culture club, which Kenma didn't even know was a thing. Apparently most of the kids in the exchange program go, it's a good way to keep in touch while not isolating themselves completely.

And this isn't what Kenma would've expected from a _party._

This place is about as chill as hippie protest.

Underneath the pleasant chatter, he can hear music playing, but it's faint and pleasant, not all consuming like he would expect. Kids have mostly settled into their groups to talk, laughing and exchanging jokes amongst themselves.

Kenma himself sits in one of these groups, leaning against the leg of a couch with a fee other people as they listen to an American strum a guitar. He's a wiry thin guy with too much chest hair, and he always tells bad jokes. Kuroo likes him a lot.

“I thought parties were… crazier than this,” Kenma mutters to Kuroo beside him, who’s adding a snapchat of the guitar player to his story.

“Usually they are,” Kuroo answers in Japanese, and the usual twinge of relief fills Kenma at hearing his own language. “Do you really think I would've dragged you to some crazy bash, though? I'm trying to get you to _like_ America.” He nudges Kenma with his shoulder at the end of his sentence before falling silent, attention returning to the guitar player.

“Hey Josh!” someone shouts from across the room, “Play Wonderwall!”

The guitar player laughs, says, “Anyway, here's Wonderwall,” and starts strumming something. Every time they repeat this joke he plays something different. Kenma makes a mental note to look up Wonderwall when he gets back to his dorm.

They're interrupted by the front door opening, admitting Akaashi and his roommate, as well as two girls toting four trays of muffins.

“I thought you were bringing brownies!” the skinny girl on Kenma’s other side whines, pushing up to approach the door. She hugs the boy and takes a tray of muffins.

“Well we were _going_ to, but Lana’s roommate turned them into weed brownies,” the taller girl with straight hair sighs.

“I just let her keep them, I don't want any.”

“I do!” a chubby guy with glasses across the apartment shouts.

“I don't care what you want!”

Kuroo chuckles, pushing himself up as the group around them disperses to welcome the girls and their muffins. Akaashi detaches from his roommate to head past them to the couch, where Bokuto sits, watching some kids play an insane video game they call ‘Duck Game.’ It looks fairly simple, but they get way too into it, screaming and wailing and shoving each other.

Akaashi sits down on one side of Bokuto, Kuroo on the other. There's just enough room for Kenma to squish in between his best friend and the arm.

“Duck Gaaaame,” Kuroo intones in English. He throws his arm over Kenma’s shoulder so he can dip to murmur in Japanese in his ear, “Of all the things I've seen Americans do, this is the strangest.”

“I don't understand why they're so into it,” Kenma responds as he watches everyone converge on the last two players, Katie and Peter, according to the screaming.

“This is… Wild,” Akaashi agrees from the other end of the couch.

Kuroo doesn't move his arm away, but settles it more comfortably around Kenma as they all shift on the small couch.

“I call next round!” Bokuto shouts in English, waving his arms and shaking them around. One of the previous losers tosses him the controller.

“You sit somewhere else then,” Kuroo says, nudging him up. “You will make us all go flying.”

Bokuto pouts, but moves to sit with the other players. Kenma watches the little pixel ducks on screen; Katie's pick up Peter’s frozen body and throws it into a lava pit. The real Peter falls to the floor in a fit that's sure to get the police called. Everyone else is screaming and clapping.

“Barbaric,” Akaashi mutters.

Kuroo chuckles, squeezing Kenma a bit in his amusement. Blushing, the smaller boy takes the opportunity to shift minutely closer. Caught up in the heat of Kuroo’s body, he misses the sly smile Akaashi shoots them.

Rounds and rounds of Duck Game pass. None of the levels seem particularly challenging, nor do they get increasingly difficult, but everyone seems to constantly forget the controls, and no one appears to be actually good at the game or understand how to play other than knowing which button to repeatedly mash to quack. The growing tension and flailing is the only thing making it progressively harder.

One level involves nothing but hammers, and it takes a total of six minutes to get through, one of the girls who brought the muffins becoming the winner by hiding in the bottom corner of the map until everyone else killed each other. Another level starts them all off with a sword, standing on a platform hardly big enough for the four players. It’s over in seconds.

Throughout the game, the screaming attracts more watchers to the couch and chairs around them. Only four people can play at once, but every player is surrounded by at least three of their friends, plus the line of kids no squished onto the couch. Kenma is thankful for Kuroo providing a barrier between him and everyone else.

“Fuck this game!” Akaashi’s roommate finally yells at the end screen, where his duck stands on the fourth place pedestal with a total of two wins. The winner is lying in his lap, a girl with olive skin and purple hair, with a total of fourteen wins. She pats him sympathetically on the leg.

“I have an announcement!” the president of the club/host – Josh – yells as people pull the girl up to congratulate her. Everyone falls silent, for the most part. “I figured out how to sync up my orbs –” he points to several strange glass balls positioned around the room, “– to the movie Sharknado, so they’ll be white until someone dies, then they’ll flash red. That said, Sharknado is on Netflix so we’re watching it and that’s final.”

“What…?” Kenma mutters.

“What the hell is Sharknado?” Kuroo asks as Josh starts connecting and unconnecting different computers to the giant TV in the corner they’ve been playing Duck Game on. Kenma watches as he gets everything synced, pulls up Netflix and finds the movie. Then he fiddles with his phone for a while and the weird glass balls around the room flash different colors.

“It’s the worst movie in the world,” the Duck Game winner sighs, falling into an armchair beside the couch. The boy she was laying on before flops on top of her, knocking the air from her lungs. _“Oof,_ get _off_ me, Bran.” She unceremoniously shoves him the floor.

“Lana doesn’t love me!” he wails. She kicks him lightly in the back.

“There’s no plot,” another boy chimes in. Kenma thinks this might be Shouyou’s roommate. “There’s literally – It’s like a bunch of beach bums on the coast or something, and there’s a tornado, and then a bunch of sharks get sucked into it.”

“That sounds horrible,” Akaashi announces as Bokuto squeezes to sit between him and Kuroo. “I’m going to sleep.” With this he leans his head on Bokuto’s shoulder and closes his eyes.

Kenma yawns just looking at him.

“Gettin’ sleepy there, Kitten,” Kuroo teases in Japanese, looking down at him with a smirk.

“I told you not to call me that here,” Kenma mumbles.

“What? You think anyone can understand us?”

Kenma blushes. “The other exchange kids can.”

“Well,” Kuroo starts confidently, “Luckily for you, the only person who would even _care_ about a silly pet name like that is Oikawa, and I haven’t seen him or Iwaizumi ever since I noticed that bedroom door was closed.” He lifts the arm around Kenma to point. “So I think you’re safe.”

Falling silent, Kenma rolls his eyes.

“But aww, are you feewing sweepy?” Kuroo teases again, thankfully still in Japanese. He wraps both arms tightly around Kenma and rocks them back and forth. “You can sleep on me if you want, I won’t let anyone draw on you or talk shit.”

Now sufficiently embarrassed, Kenma shoves Kuroo’s arms off him, thankful that he doesn’t pull away the one around his shoulders completely. “Shut up,” he mumbles, even as he leans against Kuroo’s chest. “I hate you.”

 

* * *

 

**using a neighbor’s jacuzzi with friends while they're on vacation**

“This is _bad idea,”_ Iwaizumi hisses in Japanese for the hundredth time, though he doesn’t move from his crouched position behind the corner of the house with the others.

“It’s _not,”_ Oikawa insists, swatting at him without looking back. Despite his words, he crouches a little lower behind his roommate’s sister – they’re back at their house for Christmas break, as Oikawa and his roommate Alex have grown quite close. “Ale-chan knows what he’s doing.”

“Stop calling him that,” Iwaizumi mutters, “It sounds stupid.”

“Hey, Ju-chan,” Oikawa whispers in English. Julianne turns around. “Ale-chan knows what he’s doing, doesn’t he?”

“Of course,” she smiles, full confidence. “They’re not even gonna check the cameras unless they think they’ve been robbed, and since they’re _not_ gonna get robbed, they won’t even notice an hour or two of missing footage.”

Iwaizumi purses his lips, but watches silently as Alex finishes sneaking up the blind spot of the security camera, pushing the small button to turn it off. “All clear!” he announces, hopping down from the porch railing. “It’s all ours, boys!”

Oikawa and Julianne whoop, rushing out from behind the corner and making a beeline for the jacuzzi in the corner of the patio. Laughing as their flip flops slip on the icy ground, they peel off their hoodies and sweatpants to reveal bathing suits.

Alex meets them there, and together he and Oikawa push back the covering, releasing a ton of steam into the air. As Alex messes with the controls, Julianne gathers all their discarded clothes to toss them on the porch with their towels.

“Come on, Hajime!” she calls, beckoning him out.

He squints distastefully, but picks his way through the ice just as Alex finally hits the right button, sending the jets spitting out bubbles and illuminating the water.

“Aha!” Oikawa shouts victoriously, springing up and launching himself over the edge and into the warm water.

“What color lights?!” Alex shouts over the jets, pressing more buttons. The water changes from just white bubbles to a deep blue, then pale pink, then an awful washed out orange.

“There’s a rainbow setting,” Julianne tells him as she swings a leg over the side, exclaiming as her cold skin is engulfed in hot water. She leaves her brother to figure it out himself as she sinks into the bubbles. _“God,_ this is so nice.”

“Come on in, Iwa-chan!” Oikawa shouts to his best friend, still hanging back by the corner of the house. “It’s amazing in here!”

Iwaizumi creeps forward, peering into the hot water like it’s offensive. “This is someone’s… Thing,” he tries to argue. “Should we be using their thing?”

“They won’t even know,” Alex assures him as he finally gets the lights to go rainbow. He jumps over the edge as well, landing with a splash beside his sister. “Besides, it’s not like we’re doing any harm.”

“We don’t _steal_ the hot tub,” Oikawa agrees, still waving his arms as he tries to get Iwaizumi to approach, “We just _use_ it. No harm done. Just some fun for Christmas.”

With one last exaggerated eye roll, Iwaizumi approaches the hot tub. “We get in trouble…” He points to his best friend, hair wet and clinging to the sides of his face, teeth white and straight, eyes glinting in the shifting lights, “... Your fault.”

He jumps into the hot water.


End file.
